I’m sure we all remember Impossible? that went out a little while back – the show where magician Philip Escoffey challenges people to determine whether something can be done or not (they may as well use random guessing, but there we are). It wasn’t particularly amazing, but it was entertaining enough and deserved better than to get pulled after a few episodes because nobody watched it.
So its second chance is coming round – they’ve filmed some celebrity episodes and they’re going out on Wednesday nights from 5th October at the mass audience friendly time of 11pm after Big Brother, where it will probably get even fewer viewers than it got originally (if The Beat Goes On is anything to go by). Baffling.
Just when you thought they had thought of everything…It’s Extreme Musical Chairs!
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118043221?refCatId=14
I’d be okay with this if it turns out it’s just 19 Yards finally coming to America.
That seems a very silly time for “Impossible?” as you say – it’s meant to be a second shot at making it successful isn’t it, not just burning off some unaired episodes yet they’ve given it a “burn off” slot so to speak.
Oh, by the way. Classic Deal Or No Deal today if you’ve time to watch it later, folks.
And very little reaction from it. First time though since Laura won it for the first time that the jackpot has been won in regular gameplay.
Worst scheduling decision includes moving Celebrity MasterChef to daytime.
C4’s decisions to extend Countdown to 45 minutes in September 2001, and to shove it back an hour in September 2003 and stick property shows in the 4pm slot instead, were very strange indeed…
And they certainly didn’t go down well with Richard and Carol.
Airing the 2004 series of The Vault on Tuesday nights was strange enough, too.
Just a thought regarding Celebrity Impossible and Celebrity Chase’s end games…
Won’t it be a very awkward situation in both cases for participants and viewers alike as someone will be trying to stop a charity winning money in each show- the Chaser hunting the team in The Chase and Escoffey trying to persuade them to pick the empty briefcase in Impossible?
Yes, in fact this was bought up in a previous thread – largely suspect this will reflect worse upon The Chase than Impossible?
Presumably everyone gets £1,000 for charity because that is the thing that happens, although on The Chase that’s what the team play for if The Chaser catches everybody anyway so goodness knows how they’re going to sort that out.
Yes. I’d seen it mentioned with The Chase before but it just dawned on me that Impossible will be putting themselves in the same situation. Yep – probably a consolation prize and I’ve no clue on The Chase’s method either (they’re probably hoping that the four caught situation doesn’t happen!) What are folk’s views on that second chance rule anyway?
It’s not brilliant, but The Chase without the final chase would be a bit weird.
It’s why I’d like to see the contestants chase the chaser in this final round – they have to earn the money by catching him/her.
High Stakes is so bad that ITV aren’t even giving it a weekend peak slot.
Explain.
High Stakes was originally intended for pre-XF but it didn’t impress bosses one bit so they’ve shunted it out to Tuesday 8pm.
Instead, Celebrity Chase is beginning later this Autumn in a pre-Harry Hill TV Burp slot.
Just read the bit on DS. High Stakes will not hit no more than 3.5 million. Especially when it’s slotted in the Tuesday Slot Flopzone. I’ll be in the high 2 million.
Surprised with The Celebrity Chase as I had the impression they would save it for January as in recent years, ITV have struggled on a Saturday evening.
So looking at where the schedules stand. I would guess.
The Celebrity Chase – 29th October-3rd December
The Cube – 30th October-11th December
So there is a chance The Cube will be piggy backing The X Factor live results show right up to the final.
I think it was intended to go out pre-X Factor.
It did sound *particularly rubbish* though.
At the audition we were told it was going to be that, yes.
The show was very obviously aimed at the US market, and I think that in tweaking it for the UK (with the shorter £500k ladder) they got their calculations horribly wrong – hence everyone apparently walking at £25k even though the auditions made it very clear indeed they were looking for big risk-takers.
The better option by a long way IMO would have been to scrap the clue/guess thing altogether and just have it as a straight Q&A, question on each level, pick the right answer to stay in, pick a wrong answer and you use a lifeline and have to pick any other wrong answer to survive, everything else the same. That way, the risk-reward decisions get properly interesting – you can validate playing on with no lifelines, you can validate stopping with one or more.
Yes, but none of that solves what is possibly one of the worst-implemente gimmicks in living memory: “Oh, no, I’m going down in a lift very slowly!”
Although: Alex Trebek says hello:
In an against-the-clock situation, it works. If anything, if someone’s just lost a lot of money, you DON’T want them to go away – you want to focus on their reaction.
Next they’ll be having people who miss out on the £250,000 in their box winched away on a bungee rope.
2 things not meant as a defense
1: I know the people that originally made and pitched the shown America. As with all productions it turned drastically different. It wad originally a straight Q&A with the luck element only thrown in if you didn’t know the answers. All the clues as to what the drop zones are were presented to you up front. By the time it got to pilot the current crew, for reasons beyond my knowledge, decided to flip it and make it a show of virtually all pure luck. The original format apparently also involved dropping people into a pool of water below them. It had a different title which escapes my memory at the moment. I thnk I told Brig but I can’t remember.
2: Does it ever happen where networks in England just don’t air shows? For instance we picked up the Israeli show Still Standing and made a big fuss about it. We taped episodes. And the show won’t be airing. It’s happened to quite a few game shows. Does this happen much in England? There was a major medical accident on the set of Still Standing that caused massive delays, but beyond that and the game just not being as fun as people figured, no idea what happened with it. High Stakes seems like a candidate for not airing at all if it’s going to screw up the schedule and ratings that badly, in their mind.
1. If shows go through development hell, and even if the channel is still keen to commission the revised show, sometimes I’d expect the producers – and I believe they’re meant to be experienced producers in this case – to have the balls to say “No, actually, we’ve overdesigned what was a simple idea and it no longer works.” It saddens me that people chase the commissioning dollar so much that they don’t have the guts to refuse the money sometimes.
2. British TV can’t afford to can whole series, but it does happen very, very occasionally – see, for instance, http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Press_Ganged For it not to air at all, usually something monumental has to have happened – e.g. a massive legal problem (e.g. it turns out a contestant is a former paedophile) or there was an accident on set.
Yes, High and Dry I think .i remember you said the original working title was.
Still Standing isn’t airing? Aw, was looking forward to that one.
I see the next online players who play for real on The Drop are from Hull. Well done Remarkable Television. You have dished out hopes of thousands who have applied via the website that you don’t have to live in the south east of England to get on the show.